In recent years, interpersonal interactions have been increasingly facilitated by a variety of communication technologies. For example, Internet users may interact with one another online by sharing information via an email service, a chat service, an instant messaging service, a social networking website, and/or a variety of other types of online communication services. During such interactions, people may intentionally or unintentionally share personal and/or sensitive information with one another.
In fact, during some types of interactions (e.g., interactions between users of an online social networking website), people may share personal and/or sensitive information with others whom they do not know very well. For example, a user of a social networking website may publish her physical address on her social networking profile to be seen by all other users that visit her social networking profile. Unfortunately, by mistakenly (or even intentionally) disclosing such personal and/or sensitive information to someone with malicious intentions (e.g., an identity thief), some people may fall victim to a social engineering or phishing attack. What is needed, therefore, is a mechanism that monitors information shared via communication services to notify users if they attempt to share potentially sensitive information.